Sue Crowe, a mother of three, is a passionate supporter of the Sure Start facilities that opened in the north Cornwall town of Camborne in 2001. Since the Trevu centre was launched in a disused girls' school, she has been a regular user, attending music and play sessions with her daughters, aged 18 months and three, and her seven-year-old son. The prospect of cuts in public spending that would threaten the centre make her uneasy.

She says: "Our whole town has benefited because the centre has pulled together people from all communities, who might otherwise never have met. It's a very inclusive system. If the service is cut, the town will go back to feeling very ghettoised, with poorer children never mixing with middle-class children. Children across the town will lose out socially and educationally, and their health will suffer."

When she had her oldest child, she had no access to a Sure Start facility. But life as a parent was transformed when she moved and found the children's services accessible in the centre of town, a short walk from the area's more deprived estates and the more expensive areas.

"I felt totally isolated, but when I started coming here," she recalls, "I could see parents really benefiting from the companionship. It catches first-time parents, who often don't have an idea about what they need to be doing.

"Parents and health professionals agree this is an excellent way of working; it makes it so much easier to access services. When you're lugging small children around, you don't want to drive from one place to another, keeping to set dates and times. If cuts are made and services are spread out, parents will struggle to access them, and the most vulnerable will suffer. The sense of community cohesion will disappear."